My Day With My Truck In The Shop

Had to get my truck in the shop for a scheduled maintenance, couple new drive tires and some minor repairs. My DM asked if I could make a 400 mile round trip load. Had a container that needed to be taken to shipper , loaded and to the port that evening. He knows I hate smoking and dirty trucks, so he said he had a clean truck for me to use for the day. I've heard that one before.

I head out to the yard to inspect the truck, turns out to be 2014 Volvo with 14,000 miles and no smoking, YAY. Everything checks outside, jump in the Cabot fire it up, my left foot hits the floor and there is no gear shift! Dang, an automatic. No clutch and little paddle shifter on the side of the seat.

Knight Trans is going to the dark side. Hook the container and head for shipper. Got to check out a lot of the features as I will hit several construction areas and will need to get through Baton Rogue during rush hour. Adaptive cruise and auto Trans actually work pretty good together. Set for 63 on open road, got into a little congestion and slow down at road construction areas. The truck slowed and down shifted to maintain distance to vehicle ahead, then sped back up and up shifted when traffic allowed.

The heaviest and slowest traffic, if you have been along I-12, 10 and over the bridge in Baton Rogue you know what it's like, was a breeze.

The pause between some of the gear shifting is a little longer than what you can do with a manual, that takes a little getting used to. It did tend to roll backwards when you let off the brake and before you can hit the throttle.

All-in-all, not too bad of an experience. Don't know what the reliability will be over time. I'll stick with the manual.

Oh, got the load to the port in time.

LOL! Yup. Went through that recently, too. My new KW has an Eaton UltraShift PLUS 18 speed automatic. Took a little bit to get used to but I'm kinda diggin' it. The hardest part was getting used to the new Paccar MX engine. That combo likes to run about 1200 rpms and shifts around 1500 rpms. Too used to my old Detroits and Cummins where you can wind 'em up.

I spent a couple days last week in the yard helping preload a bunch of trailers and I usef an old shag truck with a 10 speed. It's been ten years since I ran one of those. Took me a few minutes.. LOL!